


New Danger

by TrinesRUs



Series: Chasing Dani [3]
Category: Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Established Relationship, Multi, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:19:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrinesRUs/pseuds/TrinesRUs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because Evan and Myles fumbled in their attempt to gain control of the Rescue Bots, that doesn't mean Madeline Pynch is anywhere close to giving up. With a new ally, she's going to try again.</p>
<p>And this time, she will succeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Money Matters

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, the first chapter is kind of short. Future chapters will be longer. Updates for this fic are going to be much slower than they were for "Unexpected Reaction" because I'm back in school and have other fics/projects to balance this time around. However, I hope to still update at a decent rate.

            Madeline Pynch wants those robots, and what Madeline Pynch wants, she would get. Money has a way of opening so many doors. Even ones that would be closed to her face—like, say, Doc Greene’s—could be opened with the right front company, a passable half-lie, and enough zeroes on the check.

            But as much fun as it would be to get something out of one of the few people on Griffin Rock too smart to trust her again, she knows that route isn’t an option. Doc Greene probably knows enough about these “super-advanced robots” to recognize similar tech when he sees it. From there, it would be all too easy for him to decide to just not help.

            She needs someone with equal intelligence and skill, though. Someone who won’t fail her the way the twins did. Someone more trustworthy and less of a failure than Doctor Morocco. He steals enough of his tech from rivals to make her doubt his abilities anyway, but the rivals he dared to steal from might be worthy allies.

            This would take time and research, especially since she decides to expand her search far beyond the reaches of Griffin Rock. Fortunately, when she owns as many companies as she does and thus have many, many employees, she can divide up the labor quite nicely.

            Keeping Priscilla preoccupied so she won’t interrupt is a bit harder. She does love her daughter. She’s just like Ms. Pynch was when she was little, and one day, everything she owns will be her daughter’s to control. Of course, wanting the very best for her precious princess means she can always send her off on a vacation. She hasn’t been to Kuala Lumpur in a while…

            Priscilla protests a little on the grounds that they haven’t spent enough mother-daughter bonding time together lately, but Ms. Pynch promises that she’ll join her very soon. Her work will just take a few days, maybe a week, and then she can relax.

            The actual search just about drives her crazy. She finds a promising candidate out in Nevada, only to dig further and find out he’d joined a terrorist group and been killed along with a lot of other men by their boss. Thoughtless man. Someone suggests the obvious option of Anna Baranova, but she’s not a _real_ option. She can’t rely on anyone too close to the Burns family for this job. There was a prominent scientist in Detroit, but he went missing months ago.

            Just as she’s beginning to weigh the pros and cons of giving the twins a second chance to prove themselves, a seeming miracle presents itself to her. A certifiable genius—not dead, not missing, and not in any way connected with a rescue force—in a small town  in Oregon comes up on one of her employees’ searches.

            She flies out to meet him at once. He doesn’t need much convincing. He’s the sort of villain who would put “Evil Genius” on his business card. In fact, he literally has.

            And besides, like she said before, there are few doors that can’t be opened with the right amount of zeroes on the check.

            Thanks to Doctor Arkeville, she would be reunited with her precious Priscilla very soon.


	2. Calm Before the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a brief discussion of depersonalization in this chapter, so be careful if that kind of thing is upsetting to you.

            “Hey!” Haley says, running up beside him. Kade had just been out for a walk when she approached him. He hasn’t seen her in a few months, but he smiles and returns the greeting. “How are you doing?”

            “Pretty good. You?”

            “Haven’t crashed my car or gotten caught in any collapsing buildings lately, so I’d say I’m doing well.” It’s a joke about Griffin Rock’s disaster record, but it takes him a moment to realize it is. “How is your…friend?” she asks.

           “Boyfriend, now,” he says, and heat rushes to the tips of his ears. He pretends to clear his throat. “He’s good, too.”

            The smile that graces her lips is bright and genuine. “That’s great! Tell me about him. What’s his name?”

            “Hea…Heathcliff.” Kade wants to smack himself for that. Of all the fake names he could have come up with for Heatwave, he thinks of _Heathcliff?_

            Hayley doesn’t seem to believe it either. She slowly raises an eyebrow at him. “Heathcliff? Like _Wuthering Heights_ Heathcliff? Is he dark and brooding?”

            “Yeah, actually.” The blush starts to fade and he grins. “He’s not so monstrous—unless bears are involved—but brooding is definitely him. He’s got one hell of an arm, always sticks to his guns, and defends those who can’t defend themselves.”

            “Sounds like you’re pretty in love with him.”

            “I don’t know what I’d do without him.” It’s strange; when he was dating Hayley, he couldn’t imagine introducing her to Heatwave, but now that he’s with Heatwave, he wants the world to know. He wants the world to see the amazing, powerful, faithful mech he loves and tell them how awesome and lucky he is to have caught his attention. Instead, he just asks, “What about you? Got anybody, or…?”

            “Still taking some time for myself. My mother has been doing better lately, and I’m hoping it will stay like that. She’s had enough pain for a lifetime.”

            “Give her my well-wishes.”

            “Will do. Thanks. Tell Heathcliff I wish you two the best.” She still looks unconvinced about the name, but she doesn’t call him out on it. She just waves and says, “I’ll see you around.”

            “Yeah,” replies Kade, “I’m sure you will.”

~----------~

            Dani massages wax over Blades’ plating with a soft cloth. The mech’s optics are dimmed, and his systems purr gently under her hands. The sun is warming the area, but not enough to make his metal painfully hot and tight. These are the times when he feels the most at ease: his stabilizers are on solid ground; he has one of his two best friends by his side, and he’s being pampered.

            “Why can’t we do this more often?” he sighs contentedly.

            The pilot shakes her head without looking up from her work or dropping her smile. “Because wax costs money.” She takes special care with his Autobot symbol, a gesture he greatly appreciates. “Besides, if we did this every day, then it wouldn’t be a treat anymore.”

            “I beg to differ,” he murmurs and sags his shoulders. “This is too much relaxation to ever get old.”

            “Doesn’t change the fact that it costs money.”

            “Okay, you’ve got me on that one. So maybe not every day, but I still think I should get it more often for the work I do around here.”

            “You’re spoiled,” she teases.

            “But I deserve to be,” he insists. “I haven’t exactly gotten the long end of the stick the past few months.” He isn’t sure he’s using that idiom correctly. If you can get the short end of the stick, then that must mean that getting the long end is possible, too, right? Oh, right, he needs to be serious and firm now. He gives Dani his best stern look.

            “What are you talking about?” After only a second, her expression shifts from confusion to offense. “The past few months? Is this about my relationship with Chase?”

            “Yes and no. I’m happy for you two, super happy that you found each other. It’s great. But I’m not talking about the relationship; I’m talking about the buildup to it.” His optics brighten, but not from joy. “First you guys ignore me in favor of movies shared between the two of you, driving me out with that awkward romantic tension. Which would be fine, learn to share your friends and let them build connections outside of you and all that, except it didn’t stop there.

       “Then Chase got injured, and you only paid attention to him. I know his life was in peril, and I expected _most_ of the attention to be on him, except that I got _brainwashed_. My processor was violated, and no one cared at all.” He crosses his arms and sniffs.

            She starts to tell them that that isn’t true, but then she stops to think about it. She was in the hospital, and Chase was getting repairs. Graham was studying the mind-control tech, but that meant lab work, not asking any questions. She wonders if anyone ever _did_ stop to ask Blades how he was coping with everything that happened. “I—I’m so sorry, Blades. I didn’t realize…I’ll try to make it up to you. I still can’t do this a lot, but do you want to talk about it?”

            “Yes. Yes, I would.” He shifts position and lets her sit down before starting. “It was scary. It was like being drained of everything that makes me who I am. Becoming empty. Except…that’s not it exactly. I was still there. I was still aware. I was just pushed to the back of my processor where I couldn’t say or do anything, only watch in a vague, distant way. It wasn’t exactly like I could feel or react, either. I was too numb to what I was observing for that. It was like being forced to be a camera-drone, but more violent.”

            For a few minutes, he disconnects from the world around him, reliving that time, being forced to attack his friends for Evan and Myles. He only snaps out of it when Dani starts banging a hand on his chestplate and shouts his name. He shakes his helm as he comes back to himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

            “No, I’m sorry for making you relive that. Come on; let me get your rotors.”

~----------~

            Heatwave is getting antsy from the lull in rescue missions; Kade can tell. It’s in the ways he moves and how much he moves. The lack of action and the disturbingly few messages from Optimus are getting under his plating. Of course, by now, Kade is a master of getting under his plating, in several senses of the phrase.

            “Is the floor really that interesting? Because you’ve been staring at it for about half an hour,” the fireman says.

            His partner grumbles, “Yeah, well, some of us are more limited in our forms of entertainment.” He keeps his optics on the floor and continues pacing.

            Kade leans against the nearest wall and, a little too casually, says, “I bumped into Hayley a little while ago.”

            That successfully got the mech to stop. He works his jaw for a moment, then replies, “That’s great. What did she say?”

            “Let’s see…” The man taps his chin, pretending not to remember what it was. “Something about how handsome and studly I am? How cool I look when jumping into action?” He watches his boyfriend from the corner of his eye. The mech was getting steadily more impatient. “Nope, no, I remember. I was telling her about my boyfriend, and she told me how very lucky he was to have me.” He almost laughed at the expression on the triple-changer’s face, but kept it together long enough to add, “But she said it in this way where it almost sounded like she was saying I was lucky to have him. Either way, I can’t honestly say I disagree with her.”

            He hears an irritated sigh from the mech. “You know,” says Heatwave, “you could just tell me you love me without being a jerk about it.”

            “And where would the fun in that be?” Kade smirks. “Come on, we can find somewhere for you to rock-climb or go boating or just drive or something if you need to blow off some steam. Or, I know where some jumper cables and an electricity sou—”

            He’s promptly cut off by the mission alarm going off, which is disappointing if only for the expression Heatwave was making at his implications, but at least they would be getting some kind of solution to his restlessness.


	3. A Hero Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for taking so long with this chapter and sorry about how long it will be before the next.

            “It’s not one emergency; it’s _four_ ,” Cody explains over the comm.-link. “There’s a group of Lad Pioneers with a broken safety line clinging to a cliff, a beach barbeque gone wrong, a hit-and-run out by the forest trail near the EMP zone, and a family lost in the underground tunnels.”

            Dani looks over the coordinates he sends with a frown. “Is it just me, or do these missions seem awfully spread out?”

            “Not just spread out,” agrees Blades, “but specifically chosen for each team to get us all away from each other.”

            “Pfft, I think you’re both being paranoid,” Kade says. “I would expect that much from _Blades_ , but _you_ , sis? I never thought his cowardice would rub off on you.”

            “They’re right: there _is_ something weird about this. But we can’t let that stop us from doing our job. There are people in danger, and we’re going to help.” He speaks calmly, but Chief Burns can’t shake the nagging feeling that Dani and Blades are right. “Stay alert, team, and call at the first sign of trouble.”

            “Sir, are you feeling well?” asks Chase. The Chief guesses he must sense his nervousness.

            “I get the feeling that Dani and Blades are right,” he says, “but it’s just a feeling. ‘Stay alert and call in danger’ holds for us, too.”

            “Affirmative.”

            They pull up towards the stretch of road where an old man is attending a body on the ground. Chief Burns quietly tells Chase to stay back, just in case the injuries require very delicate handling. Then, he approaches the two civilians.

            Something about the old man bothers him. More like a couple things. The man has a good portion of his body replaced with cybernetics, which Burns’ father feels immediately guilty for judging him for. But, at the same time, he has never seen this man on the island before. That wouldn’t be a problem, but he has a mean look to his eyes that he’s only ever seen in people like Evan and Myles. He can’t help but be on edge, hair on the back of his neck rising with each second that ticks by.

            “Is he conscious?” the Chief asks.

            “No,” the man says, “I don’t think he is.”

            He kneels down when he reaches the civilians. “Does he have any injuries I need to be aware of before anyone tries to move him? Did you see the car that hit him, and if so, did you see the license plate number?”

            “Not many injuries,” he says. “Although, I believe he was hit in the _chest_.”

            Almost immediately, Chief Burns feels a beam hit his chest, though it feels more like a collision with a raging bull. He feels his body moving, but he feels too dizzy and disoriented to figure out in which direction at first. He groans, half in pain and half in his inability to act quickly enough, even with his suspicions about the man.

            He hears Chase transform and call out, “Sir!” before he can even open his eyes. When he finally gets them open, the world around him is blurry. He blinks to clear his vision, but it’s still a good minute or two before he can see. He’s suspended a good twenty feet off the ground, the body has been replaced with empty clothing, and the man is pointing a gun at Chase.

A gun that looks a lot like the one Evan and Myles nearly killed Chase with.

            Chief Burns has his hand to his comm.-link faster than he can think about reaching it. “Everyone, I need backup. It was a trap.”

            “I wouldn’t call your family in just yet, Burns,” the man screeches victoriously. “Set up or not, the emergencies are very real! Pull them away now, and you’ll be endangering innocent lives!” He turns his evil grin on Chase.

            The Chief turns his attention to the blue ‘Bot, too. Chase has his faceplate set into a look of pure determination. No, not pure determination: there’s fear and pain mixed in, but he’s clearly fighting that back so he can focus on the matter at hand.

            “You have attacked an officer of the law,” he says in his robot voice. “State your name, lower your weapon, and submit yourself for arrest at once.”

            “I am Doctor Arkeville!” the man proclaims.

            “Doctor…Arch Evil?” asks Chief Burns skeptically.

            “Wha…? No! _Arkeville_ ,” Doctor Arkeville says, “and I am the most brilliant scientist the world has ever seen! And if your pet robot thinks it can frighten me off with a threat to arrest me, that’s practically _precious_.”

            “It was not a threat; it was a demand,” Chase corrects.

            “And how would you plan to back it up? I have here a weapon that can burn through any metal in an instant! I can fry your circuitry and leave you useless forever!”

            The mad scientist’s histrionics make it hard to take him seriously, but his threat is still very real. They’ve faced down that weapon before. They know all too well how much damage it can do. Chief Burns starts to order his partner to stand down.

            But Chase clenches his fists and widens his stance. Doctor Arkeville only seems more excited at that. They stand facing each other, neither moving, for at least a minute; they just stare at each other in silent challenge for the other to make the first move.

            Ultimately, Chase moves first, darting to the left. Doctor Arkeville fires several rounds after him. The mech manages to dodge most of the blasts. Arkeville’s aim, evidently, isn’t the best. However, the shots are just enough to keep him from reaching and saving his partner. Chase could almost get close, but then a shot lands too close for comfort.

            The Chief appreciates the mech not staying so close that there was a risk of a missed shot hitting him instead, but that appreciation was lost in a sea of apprehension. He wants his family to get there. The whole team is more effective than one bot and a cop suspended in the air at taking down a wacky criminal like this one.

            A dot appears in the distance, slowly advancing closer. It takes the Burns’ father a moment to recognize it. After a few minutes, though, it starts to take shape, and he realizes it’s Blades and Dani flying towards them. With enough luck, they can get here before the scientist’s shots stop missing.

            Chase continues leaping and spinning out of the way of the blasts. He keeps trying to find an opening to knock the gun out of Doctor Arkeville’s hands, but getting too close means risking getting shot. Regardless, he perseveres, dodging and weaving between the blasts. Suddenly, he darts in and takes a swipe at the gun, but Arkeville pulls it away at the last moment.

            Overbalanced, Chase stumbles and falls to the ground. Before he can pull himself up, Arkeville hits him with a beam from a small device. “Personal EMP burst,” the scientist explains with a smirk, “for debilitating troublesome tech on the go.”

            Chief Burns stares at the sky, praying that Dani and Blades would get there soon. They pushed forward slowly, but they weren’t getting there near fast enough. Chase needed help now if there was any hope, and the Chief can’t pull himself from his spot hovering in the air no matter how hard he tries. He doesn’t like the way the scientist is bending over the police ‘Bot.

           Arkeville plays around with the circuitry in Chase’s back, planting a device that looks all too familiar. Slowly, the blue mech awakens and transforms into car mode. He allows Arkeville into his driver’s seat, and the two of them drive away before Blades is even brushing the tops of the trees around them.

            Dani is halfway out of her seat before Blades completes his landing. “Dad! Are you all right?” She looks at the ground and around him, trying to find what’s keeping him suspended in the air. When she finds nothing, she turns to Blades and says, with a hint of panic in her voice, “Blades, help him down if you can. Dad, where’s Chase?”

            He can’t reply. He just gives her a grave, worried look. She seems to understand at once, to an extent. At the very least, she skips over the complete denial stage and jumps right into searching urgently for him in the area, checking each and every crater from the gun’s blasts for traces of his energon and the trees for his frame.

            Chief Burns is finally back down on the ground by the time she returns to him. She repeats, desperation clinging to her tone this time, “Dad, where is Chase?”

            “Gone. Taken,” he finally manages to rasp.


	4. To Unbecome

            “Ow, ow, ow! Dani, I think you can ease up on the controls, um, maybe?”

            “Not until we’ve searched every inch of this island.”

            “We’ve been up here for hours. There are paths blocked by trees and underground that we can’t see from up here.”

            “That’s why the others should be searching on the ground,” she bites out.

            “We’re down to two ground teams, maybe three if Doc Greene can get his car cooperating. There’s only so much we can search, even over time, and there’s no telling whether that…Doctor Arch Evil or whatever kept driving all this time.”

            Dani squeezes his controls even tighter. “Well, what do you expect me to do!? Give up on finding Chase? I can’t just stop when someone could be tearing him apart or worse. I don’t want him to experience what it’s like to be forced to fight his friends. I don’t want him to have to feel…unbecoming himself.”

            The reason for the severity of her reaction strikes Blades then. “You don’t want him to go through what I went through.”

            “I’m scared he already has.”

            “Dani…we’re all worried about Chase. He’s our family, and we’re not going to give up. We’re all scared. I mean, I’m always scared,” he says, and he starts to duck his head on the screen, but he forces himself to look up as he continues, “but the situation is legitimately terrifying. This is the third time someone’s attacked us with mind control. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that I do more than enough stressing for all of us. Everyone else has to stay calm so we can do what we can, and that means you.”

            “You’re right, Blades.” Dani sighs and relaxes her grip, meaning that Blades can relax a little, too. “It’s just…I don’t want to risk this guy getting away if we can help it.”

            They fly around until it starts to get dark and they lose their chance to see much of anything, let alone Chase. The rest of the family regroups, none of them having much luck to share. “There was a sighting of him heading towards the E.M.P. zone,” says Chief Burns, “but a walk around there shows this mad scientist was too smart to actually drive in there.”

            “Too bad,” Kade adds, taking a seat on a crate. “It might have knocked out whatever mind mumbo-jumbo Dr. Mad Science was using.”

            “That ‘mind mumbo-jumbo’ is a cross between Cybertronian technology and the hypnosis cellphones from before.” Doc Greene rubs his chin. “Graham, Boulder, and I have been looking over the device planted in Blades’ frame before, and we’re certain of it. We believe Arkeville—or someone behind him—is targeting the Bots specifically, incorporating Cybertronian circuitry into the tech to make the control signal stronger without the use of a phone tower.”

            “You think the mastermind knows we’re alive?” asks Heatwave.

            “Doctor Morocco stole the tech used to adapt the phones,” says Graham, “but usually he prints his symbol all over his things. He likes the credit. We don’t think he’s behind it himself, but he has to know whoever he sold that tech to must have an interest in the Bots.”

            “Then what are we waiting for? We can just shake Morocco down for information.”

            “Easier said than done. We’d have to wait for Morocco to resurface. He’s like a snake in the winter: there’s always a hole for him to hide in until the weather gets better for him.”

            Chief Burns rubs his mustache and scrunches his eyebrows in thought. Finally, after a long pause, he asks, “Doc, do you think you could track the origin on those phones?”

            “It’s possible, Chief. I’ll see what I can do.”

            “Graham, help him. There has to be some kind of factory signature or identifying engineering technique somewhere. Dani, Blades, watch the skies for any sign of Chase or Morocco. Kade, Heatwave, you take the ocean. One hour in the morning, one in the evening. We’ll adjust schedules based on sightings of Morocco or other evidence. But right now, we all need to get some sleep.”

~----------~

            The blue Rescue Bot can do nothing but stand at attention as Madeline Pynch circles him, admiring her new toy from every angle. “Well done, Dr. Arkeville. Hardly a scratch on it. And I trust this can’t be traced back to me?”

            “Naturally. I took the most indirect route, most likely to deter anyone from following.”

            “Mm. And if anyone did follow?”

            “They would have to find which tunnel in a whole maze of them I went through.”

            “And the device?”

            “Planted. Your cop-bot will now only obey you.”

            Ah, yes. Her cop-bot. There is a problem with that. She could never be seen in public with her bot, especially not if he still looked like a cop car, without giving up the game. It will be safer when she has the whole set, but that means waiting around, even with how quickly Arkeville retrieved this one. Time is money, and she hates to waste both.

            The first option is to keep him completely disconnected from her. This bot is supposed to be used for some of her less legal dealings anyway. It would be fun to rub the Chief’s face in his failure by having him face off against his own robot, and that was her original intention. But knowing the Burns family and their reputation, she has no doubt the whole island knows about the stolen robot already. If they don’t, they will soon.

            The second option is pretending she tracked down the company that built these technical marvels—something not even someone with her resources has managed to do, surprisingly—and disguising her new prize accordingly. It still might draw a little attention that she happens to have obtained a transforming robot-car shortly after Chief Burns had his stolen, but it would at least be less obvious. All she has to do is choose a color scheme.

            Pynch slips out her phone and starts looking at pictures of cars. She tries to think about what her daughter would like in a new car. Probably something pink, but that might draw too much attention. Something sleek and black? Classic, but Priscilla wouldn’t be too happy. A compromise, then. Maroon. It would need tinted windows and not those garish yellow ones.

            On her search, she happens upon a series of intriguing pictures. After all her failed searches, it seems that someone has seen these transforming robot-cars outside of Griffin Rock. Coincidentally, this other sighting was in Nevada, around the same area her first choice of scientist had been (and that just made his death all the more disappointing). But looking at the pictures, the faces were less human and symbol on the chest was different…purple…

            “Arkeville…?”

            “Doctor.”

            “Yes, Dr. Arkeville,” she corrects, a bit strained. “Of course you will be compensated as agreed for bringing me the robots themselves, but how would you feel about being paid a little extra for some superficial alterations on them?”

            “Compensation for the work I have done first.”

            “Of course.” Pynch signs a check and hands it over. Arkeville seems more than satisfied with the amount. “Enough motivation to keep working for me?”

            “Madam, you are my most generous sponsor to date. What would you like me to do?”

            “Take off the siren lights. See if the lights on his arms are essential. If they are, change the color filters. Change the color of the eyes, too. I’m thinking red or purple. Paint him maroon and switch out the yellow windows for black-tinted ones. And most importantly, I need his chest emblem replaced with this one.”

            She shows him the photos on the phone. Arkeville takes a moment to examine them. After almost a minute, the sound of meowing starts coming from her phone. “What the—?”

            “I believe a hacker might have gotten to your photos, ma’am. Not to worry; I am certain I got a good look at the emblem. In fact, I can’t shake the feeling I have seen it before, as in a dream or a past life. I’m certain I can pull this together for you.”

            “Excellent, Doctor.” She’s liking him much more than her previous business partners.

            “You’ve been quite giving already, Ms. Pynch, but I do have one last request.”

            “Oh?”

            “When this job is over, I have been looking for a subject for some of my experiments, moving into human trials.”

            “Dr. Arkeville, as far as I’m concerned, if you pull this off, you’re set for funding and test subjects for the rest of your career.”


End file.
